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Mueen Akhter’s five-year-old company had never taken out any loans before last year, when it borrowed $6.3 million in government-backed debt to buy manufacturing materials and a 135,000-square-foot facility in Houston.

Mueen Akhter’s 5-year-old company had never taken out any loans before last year, when it borrowed $6.3 million in government-backed debt to buy manufacturing materials and a 135,000-square-foot facility in Houston.

Since July, when Houston-based Netbrands Media Corp. took out two U.S. Small Business Administration loans from Wallis State Bank, the company has boosted its head count from 120 to 300 manufacturing jobs in Houston, and it wants to grow that number to 500 next year, the young CFO told me Thursday.

Shipping manufacturing jobs from China — where the manufacturer and online retailer of promotional products had previously operated — to the U.S. was an added bonus to its full-throttle, debt-backed growth, said Akhter, CFO of Netbrands. And moving to the U.S. meant the company could take more control of its operations and ship products at high speeds, he added.

“Everyone wants their product the next day: That’s our business model, and that’s why we’ve grown. We’re adding 15,000 clients per month,” and that includes everything from Fortune 500 companies to small churches that want to promote themselves on wristbands, Frisbees, T-shirts and the like, he said.

Netbrands started up in a garage in 2007, fueled by just $2,000 investments from each of its founders. Now the young company, a unique breed in a $20 billion industry that outsources its manufacturing to China, garners about $3 million a month in revenue.

“It’s exactly what we’ve said in the (SBA): focus on creating jobs here,” said Yolanda Garcia Olivarez, an SBA regional administrator who oversees Texas and four other states.

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